Canter Bridge

‘You always know just what to say’ is one of the highest of available compliments. One hears it too seldom.

The power of the tongue, much celebrated in the biblical book of James, remains if anything too little recognized in a world of constant information, 24/7 talk radio, and generic human corruptibility.

Words—and the silence with which one chooses to frame them—are an immeasurably potent force. The biblical proverbialist recognizes this:

A soft answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger.
The tongue of the wise dispenses knowledge,
but the mouths of fools pour out folly.
The eyes of the LORD are in every place,
keeping watch on the evil and the good.
A gentle tongue is a tree of life,
but perverseness in it breaks the spirit.

The practitioner of ‘soft answers’ is no passive, introverted recluse. To the contrary, the soft answer requires a sinewy strength of uncommon finesse. As the athlete working his weight machine pushes for a quick 1.5 seconds, then lowers the bar in a patient, demanding three, the wise wordsmith engages his hardest work on the side of restraint. He possesses, above all other virtues, self-control. He does not honor passion as the patron saint of words. He knows the destructive end to which that religion leads.

Rather, he chooses his words. He selects also his silence.

A gentle tongue, we are instructed, is a tree of life. In modern proverbial dialect, it is the gift that keeps on giving. Its inexhaustible harvest nourishes and fills. By the poetics of Hebrew parallelism, we learn that perverseness in speech ‘breaks the spirit’. Words, it turns out, not only reflect upon the character of the speaker, providing a point of reference for their valuation in the human source from which they flow. They can also be accredited or discredited by what they accomplish in the lives of those who hear them, willingly or otherwise.

Good words foster life. Perversity’s syllables crush human beings who ought not to have been subjected to their shattering violence.

A word is a powerful thing. With something near to a life of its own, it makes its rounds, irrigating its environs with the blessing’s dew. Or a curse.